Nackeroos Headquarters

THE ‘NACKEROOS” HEADQUARTERS, MANTON DAM

During World War Two the Manton Dam area was the site for the headquarters of one of the most remarkable units of the war - the North Australian Observer Unit, otherwise known as the “Nackeroos”.

Immediately after the first air raids on Darwin in February 1942 it seemed that an enemy invasion of the north was more than likely. Anthropologist Bill Stanner, who knew the Territory well from his pre-war field work, suggested that soldiers and Aborigines could be combined into special mobile (often horseback) patrol units. The units would wait and watch for the expected Japanese invasion, and after the invasion they would remain in position for as long as possible to furnish intelligence about the invaders.

Stanner put his idea to the highest military and political authorities. At a time when invasion seemed imminent, the idea found favour, and Stanner was directed to form his units.

In August 1942 an advance party formed a headquarters at a site near Katherine which was was centrally located for wireless communication between Normanton and Cambridge Gulf. 550 men under Stanner’s overall command were deployed between the Kimberleys and the Gulf of Carpentaria, often at isolated outposts where just two or three men patrolled and waited, watching the coast and rivers, for months at a time.

Most of the men had been bushmen in peacetime. They were bush commandos, better known as the Nackeroos - men hand picked for their physical and mental ability to survive the hardships and isolation of the north's most remote and unfriendly places, and often specially trained by Northern Territory Mounted Policemen.

By October 1943 the Japanese threat was receding, and Stanner received directions to begin to concentrate his Nackeroos in the Darwin hinterland. The unit HQ was moved from Katherine to Manton Dam, where it remained until the unit was sent south in January 1945.